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By Raúl Ayrala. Peninsula 360 Press.
With student protests in our region, state, and across the country very much in the minds and hearts of organizers and attendees, the 2024 Student Testimonial Dinner was held in San Francisco on Saturday, May 4. Bay Area National Lawyers Guild (National Lawyers Guild or NLG).
The event was titled “In the Streets/In Our Hearts,” and the venue was the Instituto Familiar de la Raza in the Latino Mission neighborhood. After a welcome by Camilo Pérez-Bustillo, executive director of the NLG, and while enjoying fine wine, delicious bites and Arabic desserts, three “Champions of Justice” were recognized: the Palestinian Youth Movement, the advocacy organization Palestine Legal, and activist Judith “Mirk” Mirkinson.
“Despite everything that is happening in the world, the advance of fascism, here we are. And I want to tell you that there is nothing better than being an activist,” said “Mirk” upon receiving his award from the NLG.
Judith Mirkinson, who served as president of the local Executive Board of the National Lawyers Guild, has been an activist and organizer for 50 years. Beginning with her participation in marches and demonstrations against the Vietnam War, she has been involved in internationalist causes, for example: defending women sexually enslaved by the Japanese military during World War II.
Mirk was instrumental in the construction of a memorial to the so-called “comfort women” in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 2015.
Last Saturday was a night of “celebration of the resilience of the movement against repression and fascism in the United States, against students and against the Palestinian people,” said Valeria Vera, one of the masters of ceremonies and a member of the NLG Executive Board.
According to Vera, who is also studying law at UCSF, the protests by the university students are in response to “the genocide by Israel, which did not begin in October, but has been going on for decades.”
Valeria stressed that Judith Mirkinson's words were inspiring and gave her courage. “The best way to resist is to exist; to show that we will not go away, and also to educate people who may be inadequately informed about what is happening” in the Middle East.
Julia Muhsen, who is of Mexican and Palestinian descent and was in charge of presenting NLG's recognition to Palestine Legal, explained that the award-winning organization of lawyers founded in 2012 has been defending and supporting the movement for the Liberation of Palestine for all these years.
Muhsen is a law student at Berkeley, volunteers for the NLG, and is about to graduate. His father was born in the West Bank and his mother in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico.
The third recognition went to the Palestinian Youth Movement, which defines itself as a transnational, independent, grassroots organization made up of young Palestinians in exile as a result of the Zionist colonization and occupation of Palestine.
“Belonging to Palestine and our aspirations for justice and liberation motivate us to take an active role as a young generation in the national struggle to liberate our homeland and our people,” through popular mobilization, political education and participation with other movements. This is how the activist group is presented, detailed in the program of the NLG Testimonial Dinner, which is held annually and began honoring its “champions of justice” in 1979.
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